Small HO scale windfarm generators and towers. For the purists, these have all sorts of scale problems, but they look nice. In the real world, these would be only 70 feet tall, so they'​re really quite small.

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The basic shape of the turbine and tower were lasercut at Quelab from solid basswood. Motors are salvaged from the tails of some old remote helicopter toys. The lasercut pieces were designed so the motor would press fit into the turbine when the pieces were glued up. The wiring is wirewrap wire, with hand cut and bent ladder rungs / conduit holders (or whatever you want to call them) hand-pressed into the wood to hold the wiring in place and add detail. The fin of the turbine was dremel-sanded to shape. The beacon LEDs are regular 3mm. The blades of the rotors are discards from my own mQX quadcopter, cut thinner to look more like windmill-ish.

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I did most of the painting using the spray booth at Quelab. The small driver boards for the motor and beacon LED on the top of were wired up at my shop at the office. (The railroad electronics have 32 high current 12v drivers with PWM for accessories like lights, motors, etc. These motor run at very low current and voltage, so I needed a small driver to manage the current so the blades turn at a nice speed.)

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Laser cutter settings for 1/4" basswood (solid wood): s6/p100

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Small HO scale windfarm generators and towers. For the purists, these have all sorts of scale problems, but they look nice. In the real world, these would be only 70 feet tall, so they'​re really quite small.

-

-

The basic shape of the turbine and tower were lasercut at Quelab from solid basswood. Motors are salvaged from the tails of some old remote helicopter toys. The lasercut pieces were designed so the motor would press fit into the turbine when the pieces were glued up. The wiring is wirewrap wire, with hand cut and bent ladder rungs / conduit holders (or whatever you want to call them) hand-pressed into the wood to hold the wiring in place and add detail. The fin of the turbine was dremel-sanded to shape. The beacon LEDs are regular 3mm. The blades of the rotors are discards from my own mQX quadcopter, cut thinner to look more like windmill-ish.

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-

I did most of the painting using the spray booth at Quelab. The small driver boards for the motor and beacon LED on the top of were wired up at my shop at the office. (The railroad electronics have 32 high current 12v drivers with PWM for accessories like lights, motors, etc. These motor run at very low current and voltage, so I needed a small driver to manage the current so the blades turn at a nice speed.)

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Laser cutter settings for 1/4" basswood (solid wood): s6/p100

zoot_ho_windfarm.txt · Last modified: 2015/07/10 16:38 by John Benedetto